Words Fail

Tag Archives: boy

I’m not even going to say anything about the shoes, but where do you even get a headband like that?

You hear a lot of noise about the children. Think about the children. How will we explain this to the children?

Children are a lot more open-minded than adults, and a lot better able to assimilate information that diverges from their previously held worldview. Children like to be initiated into the secrets of the world.

So, you know how we explain this to the children? With simple unbiased, age-appropriate words, providing additional information as appropriate, because there aren’t any important conversations we have with our kids just once. We communicate our values through word and action, and if we show the children that it’s OK to be who you are, even if you’re different, then we raise children who learn to be kind and accepting of themselves and others. We teach that the world requires many different ways, and that it would be dull and flavorless if we were all exactly alike. We celebrate diversity wherever it can enrich our understanding of our condition.

If we communicate fear and hatred, we raise children who learn to loath their own uniqueness and torment those who dare to express their uniqueness honestly. We teach them to police themselves, to ridicule divergence and lack of conformity. We drive everything that doesn’t fit within our rigid boundaries underground and then we congratulate ourselves on keeping things orderly, of proving to ourselves that clearly, ours is the only perspective, because we’ve silenced all the other voices.

Mostly, though, we have to trust kids to know who they are. Our labels and our perception can’t get at their inner truth; they have to get at their own insides themselves. We have to let them know that we trust them to tell us who they are, even if they are something we do not yet understand. That’s what we tell the children.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve noticed that the appropriate pronoun for Dragon is “dragon.”

This story arc has been brewing almost since the beginning of the comic, which is why it has never happened, in 107 comics, that Dragon has been referred to with a gender pronoun.. For a while it seemed like I was going to chicken out and not go with it, but it’s been on my mind for a long time. As is true for most of my comics, I have some person stuff to work out. The time is right. Everyone’s talking about gender right now. Of course, some of us have been talking about it for decades, but now your granny is talking about it.

To start, I think most open-minded human beings can admit that gender behavior occurs along a spectrum. We really meet comparatively few men who, say, don’t think puppies and kitties are adorable. We rarely find women embracing the quality of weakness. And since gender is expressed through choices and behavior, if its expression takes place on a continuum, then gender itself can’t truly be a binary either. You could describe it as a quaternity (one, the other, both, neither) but even that doesn’t get at the nuances of who we feel like inside.

Little kids are taught the binary, which leads some of us to hide the parts that don’t fit, or else to be become saddled with derogatory tags. But why does a kid’s gender matter? We don’t want kids pairing off and mating in our society, and we no longer force adults into rigid gender roles for their entire lives to reinforce a social order for which they must begin relentlessly training at a young age. So, frankly, why should we care about little kids’ gender at all? Why shouldn’t we let them be who they feel they are?

Monday was the first day of spring break. This scenario, more or less, took place at approximately 1 p.m. The Girl really did say something along those lines, too. Sometimes I can’t tell if she is funny on purpose or by accident, but we all had a good laugh. I wasn’t feeling funny today, and she said it was all right to use her gag. I had to change it up a bit to make it work as a comic, though.

Today, in addition to not feeling funny and drawing this comic anyway, I also put up a new T-shirt design, in addition to yesterday’s peacock. It’s the ’52 Ford Bus! Maybe I should do a whole series of rusty classic cars. They’re a lot easier to draw than birds.

Are you this happy? No? Do you have a QWERTYvsDvorak shirt? Do you think there might be a connection?

I know quite a few people got QvD T-shirts for Christmas, and they promised to send me photos, but this is the only one I have so far. OK, that’s not 100% true. There is also this:

That’s a giralicorn on the left. The welding masks and nunchaku are, I believe, cherished elements of this family’s Christmas tradition.

There is an explanation for that photo, but it doesn’t make any more sense than the photo itself.

For six long years before QWERTYvsDvorak, I was the lead writer for a successful international Internet-based company. Technically, I was hired to write web content for search engine optimization, which meant one thing in 2008, when I started, and means about 15,000 different things in 2015. During my tenure, I was often called upon to work on more direct marketing type stuff, advertising, outreach, mass mailings. When I worked at WW Norton, I also had occasion to work with the marketing department.

Here’s one thing I’ve known about myself: I suck at marketing. Beginning with my utter inability to market myself as a likable human being (see yesterday’s post) and continuing steadily to today, I’ve never had the knack of convincing large groups of people to view my perspective favorably. This is weird, actually, since I’m a decent writer and have a degree in psychology and have been told by many people that I would excel in both the fields of advertising and law. And possibly, if I could make myself care about either of those things, I could be good at them.

But even though I would love it if people bought more T-shirts, I don’t know how to make people want to buy more T-shirts. I don’t know how to make myself care about selling enough to do the work of selling. I mean, I know how to create an ad campaign and pay various broadcasters to promote that material, but I hate that stuff. I just want to draw the T-shirts (step 1) and get to step 3 (profit), without working on step 2 (?).

Anyway, here are some adorable T-shirts. I drew them. Certain human beings appear to take joy in possessing and wearing them. If you too feel that there might be some joy in the acquisition and donning of our fine QvD merchandise, it would give me immense pleasure to sell you a T-shirt.

My brother emailed me asking if I could send him a high-res version of “My Nephew Goes Wading,” the little doodle I scrawled out a while back when I was working on “My Sister and Brother-in-Law Look to the Future.” I sent him the files but really, it was just a scribble. I always meant to paint it. He wanted an art print or something! It was just a few lines. So, the last few days have been dedicated to fleshing it out.

It’s hard to accurately capture the joy on his face.

It’s not quite 100% satisfactory yet. In small format it looks good but for a blown up version it’s not quite there. Maybe in the next day or so.

Digital paint has a lot of advantages over real paint; it’s less messy, and it’s easier to take back, paint over, or adjust mistakes. It’s cheaper. It smells better. But…it’s still nice to have real materials (which I can’t afford right now so whatever). Painting is for the wealthy, or for people with patrons.

Anyway, “My Nephew Goes Wading, Redux.” I can get better with practice. I know I can.

The week after our wedding, we hiked to Sabino Dam with the family that remained in town. It’s kind of a long walk for little kids, but I promised them they’d like it when we got there, and they did. It’s only a very small amount of water spilling over, at least most of the year, but it forms a lovely wading pool, and there are even little patches of white sand here and there among the rocks, so you can pretend it’s actually the beach.

My nephlings were delighted. The baby went pantsless, the middle child rolled his cuffs all the way up and walked carefully, but the big one just jumped in wearing jeans. To me, that would have been very unpleasant (and walking back in wet jeans? Ug!) but he was deliriously happy up until they told him it was time to leave. I love the attitude captured in this drawing. He is so enraptured, and he is so uninterested in anything besides his own joy.

It’s a rough little image, but I guess he’s a rough little guy.

I like learning about the interplay of light and shadow, as well as the anatomy I pick up as I go. Wonder what other people think of this. Does it need more detail or does this picture tell the whole story?